part 1 - Iccrom

MEASURING HERITAGE CONSERVATION PERFORMANCE
6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation
took place during informal conversations and questions
about the place, which led to their recalling the
facts by using keywords of common concern to their
daily lives. The oral statements were transcribed
into a digital base such that they form an archive on
the Isthmus of Olinda and Recife.
1.3. The reading of the urban layout
The reading of the urban layout followed the elements
of its urban-environmental structure: physical
structure and active structure. To this end, we
used the Unibase of Recife and Olinda and current
photographs. The reading was conducted, after
defining the study area, over five visits to the following
locations: the isthmus itself, Maruim Island,
the port of Recife and the city of Olinda, which
enabled us to locate the isthmus in relation to the
cities of Olinda and Recife and its access points and
to define seven landscapes or environmental units
and make a formal characterization of each of these
landscapes. The visits were structured prior to their
being made in accordance with each of the surveys.
The information collected was recorded on maps
and field cards.
1.4. Interpretation of the
documentary historical sources
Having organized the documentary sources, we
proceeded to match these up and check the consistency
of the information, as well as interpreting this
material.
The official primary sources, such as engineers’
reports, were analyzed in line with the technical
language used, their criteria for value and the progressive
discourse that permeated engineers’ plans
in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. Thus, the
language, values, and discourse were also elements
of analysing consistency of the newspapers of the
age, travel and war diaries, folklore and poetry in
addition to legislation on protection, all of which
described the isthmus as being at the heart or its
specific historical context.
The consistency of the secondary sources was
verified as per the research focus and by identifying
inconsistencies in relation to the history of the
isthmus. The fortifications built there during the
Dutch occupation, for example, contain elements
for discussion and unproven information according
to some authors. Therefore, works that showed
dubious information were dispensed with so as to
proceed towards another important step: comparing
different sources that had been researched.
Comparing the sources represented one of the
main stages of the research, this being the time to
raise hypotheses and to establish key themes about
the inflections of history and the meanings acquired
by the isthmus over the centuries. In this phase,
all the different kinds of historical sources were
contextualized and compared in order to check the
multiple ways of understanding the place.
It should be noted that the landscapes and the isthmus
seen from Olinda and from Recife as well as the
statements of the residents and the experts shape a
significant part of how to identify the place, how it
is remembered and what its unique features are.
Having identified the asset, and having confirmed
its authenticity and integrity, the project moved on
to producing the website using a web design team
which was different from the team that conducted
the studies. Thus, adjustments were made and
complementary text and iconography added to the
media and information language. 6
1.5. Advertising the Saint Peter of the Clerics
Courtyard 7 in Recife as a tourist attraction
The urban and architectural complex called ‘The
Saint Peter of the Clerics Courtyard’, an asset listed
by Iphan, comprises the Church of Saint Peter of
the Clerics and the houses surrounding it. Besides
the beauty that results from the contrast formed
between the richness of the church and the simplicity
of the surrounding buildings, the whole unit
displays great urban unity and is one of the most
complete in the neighbourhood of Santo Antônio.
The Saint Peter of the Clerics Courtyard also bears
witness the diversity of Pernambuco’s traditional
popular manifestations, having been classified
by Gilberto Freyre as the place which is the “most
Recife-like in Recife”. However, despite having
these attributes, the courtyard has been undergoing
a process of being forgotten about and becoming
degraded, which goes straight back to the state
of conservation of its assets, which have fallen into
disrepair.
Given this situation, the project ‘Promotion of
Tourism in the Saint Peter of the Clerics Courtyard
in Recife’ 8 was carried out in order to advertize the
place as a tourist attraction. One of its products is
the website ‘Saint Peter Courtyard: Popular Tradition
and Tourism in Pernamco’. 9
Ribeiro, C.; Lira, F.; Piccolo, R. & V. Pontual. 2012. Conserving and identifying heritage: A methodological contribution. In Zancheti,
S. M. & K. Similä, eds. Measuring heritage conservation performance, pp. 15-25. Rome, ICCROM.
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